2nd brain collective Archives - Page 11 of 22

Guest Post: 10 Marketing Tips to Win Over Millennials

The 21st century; what are a profitable market! The millennials represent a significant opportunity for marketers.

However, the millennial market is hard to connect with. As opposed to the traditional market, the millennial market is dominated by changed buying habits.

To sway up this difficult crowd, we have compiled some marketing tips essential to win over the millennials.

1. Make use of Instagram

Instagram is a marketing tool which has magically evolved in the 21st century. The millennials have embraced it as one of the greatest e-commerce platforms.

Recently, this platform has massively grown to offer big marketing force to current the generation.

For those companies who want to connect with this generation, media presence is the badge of acceptance. Instagram offers brand education, awareness and purchase options for the current market.

2. Optimize your social media content

Companies who want to win over millennials mostly connect with them via social media. This strategy is made more effective by the use of SEO. Optimizing your content is critical, as this will give it the opportunity to draw massive traffic. Short brief optimized pieces tend to well in attracting traffic.

3. Focus on customer reviews

The millennial is a crowd that would read up to ten reviews before settling on your brand. Online reviews not only influence buyers but also make your content rank high in Google search engines. If you want to convince the millennial, you have to get the best positive reviews-through offering best services.

To leverage this, you will have to solicit feedback. Ensure that you ask for reviews from your customers. Additionally, ensure that you respond to both positive and negative reviews. Even negative reviews? Yes. Simple follow-up or acknowledging the feedback helps you make the millennials feel heard, humanizing your brand and building trust for your business.

What about negative reviews?

Wow! As cynical as it sounds, a negative review offers a big selling opportunity. You know, people like negative comments. When they converge to react to the review, ensure that you humbly respond to the review, but focus on the catch- selling your brand.

4. Appeal to their values

Millennial purchasing habits come aligned with their social identity and their memorable experiences. This means that brands that appeal to their values will definitely go on top. Why? Well, it serves their appetite.

5. Use their insight to innovate the product

For marketers who want to connect with millennials, they have to investigate their lifestyle, interests, and passions. On determining what’s important to them, and probably their unmet need, the marketers should then try to use their findings into designing their products.

6. Don’t sell the product, but the purpose

The past generation looks into the features of a product. The current market space looks into the “WHY.” What’s your why? What difference does your product bring to the generation? Let your purpose be on the lead.

This trick gets hold of this generation real quick. You need just to spell out your purpose. Talk of solutions that you can offer as a marketer. (They can’t buy the solution without purchasing the product).

7. Make use of posters

Advertising through posters can easily provide the information required about the brand’s awareness. A poster features images, visual design, colors and the copy.

Posters come in a wide range of shapes and sizes. You may design your poster in different standard poster dimensions, according to your purpose.

Here are 3 tips for designing the right poster;

Ø Imagine your purpose for the product and design it with the right intent.

Ø Is your brand loud or understated? You should use the right mix of elements to reflect your brand.

Ø Find the right printer, the one who will allow you to design the poster on their platform. In case you’re design savvy, you can take your ready design to a printer.

8. Authenticity

To win the millennial market, you need a brand similar to a human face. The millennial market can distinguish between the real talk from mere Ads. You should, therefore, focus on giving practical, actionable tips. Make their shopping experience as personalized as it can be, and award yourself with a flourishing business.

9. Make use of social touch points

Millennials are mostly connected to one social platform at once. They are everywhere every minute, looking for useful stuff and enlightenment. No wonder marketing platforms are becoming not only means but ends as well. The development of platforms such as omnichannel marketing provides you with an increased capacity to connect with millennials anywhere anytime.

10. Make use of millennial social influencers

Social influencer marketing is among the popular strategy for marketing to millennials. It involves leveraging the follower base of a social influencer to sell your product.

The followers of a social influencer are always willing and eager to view their content. They believe the content shared by an influencer is not spammy or pushy.

If you make use of the influencers in marketing your product, you are likely to rank high in capturing the millennial market. Instagram and YouTube is the place!

Grabbing the millennial market can be difficult, but possible. When you earn their trust through millennial-friendly advertising and marketing strategies, you can be sure that they will use their social media and iPhone to sing your song.

Susan Ranford is an expert on career coaching, business advice, and workplace rights. She has written for New York Jobs, IAmWire, and ZipJob. In her blogging and writing, she seeks to shed light on issues related to employment, business, and finance to help others understand different industries and find the right job fit for them – Strategics360.com

New Video: It’s a Breast Thing – 2018 Event Hype Video

It’s time again for the It’s a Breast Thing Annual Charity auction and fundraiser. We decided to go a little retro with the music since it was a Hollywood style theme and get people pumped up for the event.

A little bit about the organization:
The Mission of “It’s a Breast Thing” is to enrich the lives of local breast cancer patients on their journey to better health.

We do this through:
-grants to residents of Clinton, Eaton, Ingham & Shiawassee counties or those living outside the 4 county area but receiving their treatment in the named counties who have unmet needs related to their breast cancer treatment;

-a fundraising “Event” showcasing the latest information on breast health, breast cancer prevention and treatment;

-a themed bra decorating contest at the event;

-a calendar with the contest winning bras modeled by local breast cancer survivors;

-establishing a partnership with local providers and supporters of those in treatment for breast cancer.

For more on It’s a Breast Thing: http://www.itsabreastthing.org/

#BetterCallPaul – Julie Holton Talks About the Fake News Phenomenon

In this segment Paul asks Julie to dig into her background as a broadcast journalist and talk about this new era of fake news.

#BetterCallPaul – Introducing Marja and Nic

This fall we will have two production interns that will be splitting duties. Meet Marja Jones and Nic Moline, who are both students at Lansing Community College in the Digital Media track. However, that’s not all they have in common…including applying for an internship at UnoDeuce.

Guest Post: How to Better Understand Your Business’s Big-Picture Finances

When you are a business owner, there are many important tasks that you need to be able to participate in. One of the most important areas of any business are the finances and as an owner you will need to constantly understand your business’s finances. There are four tips that can be followed that will help you to better understand the finances of your business.

Hire Accountant

One of the best things you can do to better understand your business’s big-picture finances is to hire an accountant. When you hire an accountant, you will have someone that is able to prepare financial records and then present them to you in a fashion that is easy to review. At the same time, you will be able to receive a report and analysis that can explain to you why certain trends are occurring and what can be done to change them.

Use Software Programs

Another great thing that you can do to better understand the finances of your business would be to use a software program such as aggregatespend.com. When you have a software program for your business finances and to help with agrregate spend solution, you will receive a variety of reports that can help to make it easy to pull financial data. This will allow you to stay on top of your business finances whenever you need to have access to them.

Open Communication

It is very important that you have full communication with your company at all times. You should make sure that you are speaking with all department heads to get a better understanding of current performance. If things are trending in the wrong direction, you will want to make sure that you have time to react.

Stay Involved

Most importantly, you need to stay involved with your business. Depending on the size of your business, you may have to rely on other people to run certain functions of the organization. While you can hire people to do certain things, you do still need to stay involved with the company. It is important that you understand what is going on with your company on a daily basis. This will help you to better predict financial outcomes and understand your business finances.

When it comes to understanding finances, no two businesses are the same. Because of this, you will need to truly be connected with your organization in order to fully understand it. This will allow you to stay on top of the company and continue to do well.

Meghan Belnap is a freelance writer who enjoys spending time with her family. She loves being in the outdoors and exploring new opportunities whenever they arise. Meghan finds happiness in researching new topics that help to expand her horizons. You can often find her buried in a good book or out looking for an adventure. You can connect with her on Facebook right here and Twitter right here.

#BetterCallPaul – How Tom Parks Feels About The Last Jedi

The Last Jedi was the most controversial Star Wars installment to date it seems, and it was not lost on Tom. Tune in here to see how Tom Parks of Premier Franchise Solutions felt about it.

To watch the whole conversation: https://wp.me/p8q8pr-1BH

For more on Premier Franchise Solutions: https://premierfranchisesolutions.com/

Guest Post: Best High End Drones on the Market

Not sure where to begin? Don’t worry, we did the research for you!

Over the past years, drones have developed into having many purposes. From being used by hobbyists to being necessary business tools. In fact, the industry has become so diverse that there are even drones for kids available these days.

The market has since grown tremendously and you can find basically any size, shape or feature that you could ever want or need. It can be overwhelming when searching for that perfect drone and figuring out where you should buy it from. To eliminate any headaches, we’ve put together a master list of the absolute best high end drones on the market today.

Autel Robotics Evo Folding Drone

A perfect drone when it comes to transporting and traveling with it! The size is just right to pack up easily and carry. It also has enough density so that it doesn’t get pushed all over the place by winds during flight. It’s quick to setup for flying. The wings simply fold out and all you have to do it place the drone on the ground; you’re ready to fly!

The battery is also a very simple process to switch out. It’s about the entire back half of the drone and it easily slides out with a click. The charge time is quick, at around 1 hour to become almost fully charged. With that, you can get up to 30 minutes of flight time.

Overall, the drone has a very sleek and efficient design. The entire underneath and heat vents are all aimed to cool off the drone during flight and these features do a really great job. It’s obvious that a lot of care went into the creation of the drone’s body.

It’s eye-catching and built extremely well and of quality. It also is equipped with an industry-leading camera that captures 4K at 60 frames per second. The orange color of the drone also gives it a nice trendy feel.

A great feature of the Autel Robotics Evo is actually its ability to sense any danger. If any of its sensors detect an object, it will prevent you from flying forward while giving you a warning. You can also set it to follow you and if it detects anything, it will divert it and then continue following you.

DJI Mavic Air Quadcopter

Second on our list is the DJI Mavic Air and if you know anything about drones, you already know that DJI is the leader in this industry. This drone is equipped with an incredible camera. It offers 4K video recording and the drone is built with a three-axis gimbal for stability. This means that your footage will be extremely smooth.

Similar to the previously mentioned Autel Robotics Evo, the arms are foldable on the Mavic Air. This makes packing and carrying the drone very effortless. It can easily slip into a backpack or even a camera bag.

This drone is extremely well built on the exterior and interior, despite its small size. Because of this, it can reach speeds up to 40mph. Paired with this, the Mavic Air has a transmission distance of 4 kilometers. Or you can connect to a mobile device and get up to 50 meters of distance.

An impressive feature that the Mavic Air offers is the use of HDR photography algorithms. It helps obtain the perfect exposure settings automatically depending on the lighting situations in the environment.

DJI Mavic Pro Quadcopter

I’m sure it’s no surprise the next high end drone on the market is another one from DJI. The Mavic Pro.

If you’ve ever seen any drones from the Phantom series by DJI, you’d know how compact and lightweight they are considering their capabilities. Well, the Mavic Pro’s incredibly portable size knocks them all out of the water. It’s about 1/6th of the size when folded.

You may think that it doesn’t provide the same abilities and features that larger drones have, but this little one sure packs a punch. It features a 4K camera that captures footage at 30 frames per second. The camera is mounted on a small motorized gimbal which is able to make almost instant adjustments to keep itself leveled.

Similar to its cousin, the Mavic Air, it can reach speeds up to 40 mph. And per a full-charged battery, it can endure flight time of around 27 minutes. The battery itself takes about an hour to charge back up and then you’re ready to fly again!

And just when you thought the world of drones couldn’t possibly be better, DJI actually released the Mavic Pro 2 and it is now available for sale. We’re still waiting eagerly to be able to give an in-depth review on it.

Things to Consider Before Purchasing

If you’ve never purchased a drone before, it’s important that you take a moment to read up on federal and state drone laws. If you’re buying a drone soon, you should know that you absolutely must register before you take the first flight. Perhaps some of these drones are out of budget for you or you’re a novice to the flying; this list of drones under $500 may be more suitable.

As you can see, all three of these drones are the top of the industry. While they may offer slightly different features, you won’t go wrong with choosing one over the other. If you’re ready to upgrade to a high end drone, check out one of these today!

Following his passion and ambition for writing and technologies, Chams Edhia Riahi started TheDroneLogic.com, an authority site where he informs people about the best drones; tips to fly them and their main industry announcements.

#BetterCallPaul – A Conversation with Joe Garcia of Cristo Rey Community Center

This month our owner, Paul J Schmidt sits down with Joe Garcia of Cristo Rey Community Center. The conversation revolves around living in California, to finding your passion to working in non-profit organizations to leaving a legacy for your kids.

A whole lifetime of wisdom packed into a 20 minute timeframe.
For more information on Cristo Rey: https://www.cristoreycommunity.org

#BetterCallPaul – Tom Parks on Why He Loves the Franchising Method

In this Conversation with segment, we listen to Tom Parks as he talks about why folks love franchising instead of building a business from scratch. A tried and true method doesn’t make you less of an entrepreneur.

For the whole conversation: https://wp.me/p8q8pr-1BH

Guest Post: Overexertion Leads to 34% of Workplace Injuries: Top Tips to Keep Employee Exhaustion at Bay

Workplace injuries are jarringly common, and according to the National Safety Council, 34 percent of these injuries are connected to overexertion. While you do need your employees to complete tasks during the day, you also want to prevent exhaustion. Implementing some useful strategies into your workplace can combat this serious issue.

Provide Ample Sick Time

Some of your employees are likely overexerting themselves because they are fearful of calling in sick. In other words, they worry about the loss of pay that results when you don’t allow for sick days. While you need not permit an excessive amount of sick days per employee, you should establish a plan that does not penalize employees’ pay for calling out sick a reasonable amount of times per year. You should also establish a protocol for doing so. For example, make it clear whom employees should contact and when they should do so if they need to call out. Giving employees the time to recover allows them to recharge and come to work fully energized.

Create a Workplace of Wellness

Encouraging wellness is about more than having a sick-days policy. If the break room is loaded with sugary snacks, you probably have a number of employees who crash by middle of the afternoon. Offering healthy foods can give your employees the necessary boost to attend to their tasks and to fuel their bodies. Depending upon time constraints, considering allowing for wellness breaks at work. For example, you might encourage to relax and rejuvenate with a meditation session shortly before or after lunch.

Stagger Computer-Related Tasks

The American Optometric Association notes that Computer Vision Syndrome is an issue that can come with spending too much time on the computer. Some of the effects include headaches and blurry vision. Consider how tired a constant headache or blurry eyes can make you feel. By staggering computer-related tasks and getting your employees away from the screen, you can notice a more productive work environment.

Organize Yourself

Part of the problem might be that you don’t give employees enough time to complete their tasks because you’re behind yourself. Dedicate a day this weekend to getting caught up. Before you assign more work to your employees, ask how long you would realistically take to complete the task. Setting up reasonable deadlines means that you’re employees aren’t going to be working late into the night and early in the morning to meet your demands.

An aggressive problem with employee exhaustion at work could lead to injuries, consultations with lawyers, and requests for funds. Instead of creating more of these issues, work to fight against employee exhaustion.

Hannah Whittenly is a freelance writer and mother of two from Sacramento, CA. She enjoys kayaking and reading books by the lake.